AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I love you.” His words were said against my cheek, and they reverberated right down my spine and into my toes.
“I love you, too.”
When he pulled back we looked at each other. He brushed aside the hair that had gotten in my eyes and stuck to my lips. For the first time in two days he looked at ease, practically relaxed. Whatever had been building up inside him since we were at Callum’s compound looking for Mercy’s head had melted away, and was replaced with a kind of calm that I was jealous of.
A loud knock on the kitchen door cut through the moment, and Wilder stepped back, helping ease me off the counter.
It wasn’t Magnolia, she didn’t bother knocking.
When I opened it up, Detective Bryce Perry was on the other side. He wore a rumpled dress shirt with the top two buttons undone, underneath what must have been a second hand suit jacket that was a size or two too big for him.
“Detective?”
“Ms. McQueen.” He tipped an imaginary cap at me. His ginger hair shone brightly in the afternoon light, and he’d shaved recently enough he almost looked presentable.
“Do you want to come in?” I couldn’t imagine what had brought him here. To my knowledge none of my pack members were in trouble at the moment—unless I counted myself. “Is
everything okay?”
“Well…” He stepped over the threshold when I opened the door, after wiping his already clean shoes on the mat outside. “See, I’m not sure how to answer that question.”
Oh, this did not bode well.
Bryce pulled out a chair at the table and took a seat, then rifled through the messenger bag he’d had slung over his shoulder. He withdrew a laptop and set it up on the table. It honestly looked like he was preparing to camp out and start work for the day.
Wilder and I exchanged glances, but I decided to hold my tongue for the time being. The detective had obviously come here with a purpose, and as long as that purpose wasn’t moving in with me, I could grant him a little of my scant patience.
He started going through some files on the laptop, and right when I was about to remind him he wasn’t alone, he said, “I don’t think I need to remind you about the situation you found yourself in in Franklinton last year, do I?”
I swallowed hard. Bryce hadn’t been involved in that case, so I didn’t particularly love that he was bringing it up. I would have to be stupid to think the police didn’t have a file going on me and the pack, but it was still surprising to hear him bring up something he hadn’t been around for. Not to mention I had long since put the whole debacle with the Church of Morning and its cult-like leader Timothy Deerling in my rear-view mirror.
“I remember it pretty clearly.”
He nodded. “Great, so you probably also remember what happened to one Mr. Timothy Deerling.”
Thinking his name to myself was one thing. Hearing it said out loud made a thin sweat break out on the back of my neck. “I remember he got half his face blown off by a deputy there.”
Again, Bryce nodded, like he couldn’t agree more with my assessment. “Yeah, I read her report. I saw the video footage from inside the church. Congrats on not dying, by the way,” he said to Wilder.
“Uh, thank you?”
I pushed down the memory of Wilder, shot in the chest, bleeding out at my feet. He was fine, he was fine, everything was fine. Just thinking of it made my anxiety kick up a few more notches. Where was this going?
“So, with that in mind, you’ll have to forgive me, but I found this video very confusing.”
He pulled up a grainy black and white video on the laptop. It showed four different panels in a square, each a distinct camera angle on a different area of a building. My stomach clenched when I realized it was the church in Franklinton where the incident we were just discussing had taken place. At first I thought he was about to show me footage of the events of that night, but the time stamp on the video was for yesterday, just before midnight.
At first there was nothing, just empty views of different church facilities.
“Since that night, the church has been vacant until a local trust can decide what to do with it. They want to sell it to another church group, given that’s the most logical use for the building, but I gather no churches are interested in buying a building where werewolves were tortured and killed in the basement.” He glanced up and saw something in my expression that made him add, “Sorry.”
“What are we looking at, exactly?”
“Last night, like most nights, a security guard was working on site, you know keeping any squatters or kids out, that sort of thing. The same guard works every evening shift, different guy on weekends. This guard,” He tapped the screen as a man walked into view. The guy was chubby, moving slowly, but seemed focused on his work, checking every inch of the area he was in. “That’s Jim Kind.”
There was no way this story had a happy ending. The guy having the last name Kind was some sort of terrible omen.
“The guards are unarmed, beyond a stun gun and night stick. No guns. They didn’t think that sort of thing was necessary for the location, given how remote it was and how little trouble they’d had over the last year. Can’t say I’d have done it any differently myself.”
